Jack Benny first appeared on radio as a guest of
Ed Sullivan in March 1932. He was then given his own show later that year, with
Canada Dry Ginger Ale as a sponsor –
The Canada Dry Ginger Ale Program, beginning May 2, 1932, on the NBC
Blue Network and continuing there for six months until October 26, moving the show to
CBS on October 30. With
Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933. Benny did
The Chevrolet Program until April 1, 1934, with Frank Black leading the band. He continued with
The General Tire Revue for the rest of that season, and in the fall of 1934, for
General Foods as
The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny (1934–42), and when sales of
Jell-O were affected by sugar rationing during
World War II,
The Grape Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny (later the
Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes Program) (1942–44). In 1941, NBC celebrated Benny's 10th anniversary in radio in an unprecedented manner, broadcasting part of a banquet dedicated to him, in which the network conceded the Sunday 7:00 to 7:30 pm slot to Benny instead of the sponsor, as it was the custom during the
Golden Age of Radio. In 1942, due to sugar shortages during war time, General Foods switched their sponsor product from Jell-O to
Grape-Nuts.
World War II affected the show as Harris joined the Merchant Marines, being absent from the program from December 1942 until March 1943. That fall, Morrow joined the Army and Beloin left the show; they were replaced by
Milt Josefsberg,
John Tackaberry,
George Balzer, and Cy Howard, the latter of whom was soon replaced by
Sam Perrin. The new writers emphasized sitcom situations instead of the film parodies prevalent in earlier years. Also during this time, Hilliard Marks, the brother of Benny's wife, Mary Livingstone, became the show's full-time producer. In early 1944, Dennis Day enlisted in the Navy, not returning until 1946. He was temporarily replaced by tenor Larry Stevens. In October, 1944, after 10 years with General Foods, American Tobacco's Lucky Strike became Benny's sponsor, an association that lasted until 1959. The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president
William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–49. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. In 1952, Harris was replaced by
Bob Crosby. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as
The Best of Benny.
Sponsors In the early days of radio and in the early television era, airtime was owned by the sponsor, and Benny incorporated the commercials into the body of the show. Sometimes, the sponsors were the butt of jokes, though Benny did not use this device as frequently as his friend and "rival" Fred Allen did then, or as cast member Phil Harris later did on his
successful radio sitcom. Nevertheless, for years, Benny insisted in contract negotiations that his writers pen the sponsor's commercial in the middle of the program (leaving the sponsor to provide the opening and closing spots) and the resulting ads were cleverly and wittily worked into the storyline of the show. For example, on one program, Don Wilson accidentally misread Lucky Strike's slogan ("Be happy, go Lucky") as "Be Lucky, go happy", prompting a story arc over several weeks that had Wilson unable to appear on the show due to being traumatized by the error. In fact, the radio show was generally not announced as
The Jack Benny Program. Instead, the primary name of the show tied to the sponsor. Benny's first sponsor was Canada Dry Ginger Ale from 1932 to 1933. Benny's sponsors included
Chevrolet from 1933 to 1934,
General Tire in 1934, and Jell-O from 1934 to 1942.
The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny was so successful in selling Jell-O, that General Foods could not manufacture it quickly enough when sugar shortages arose in the early years of World War II, and the company stopped advertising the dessert mix. General Foods switched the Benny program from Jell-O to Grape-Nuts from 1942 to 1944, and it was
The Grape Nuts Program Starring Jack Benny. Benny's longest-running sponsor, was the American Tobacco Company's Lucky Strike cigarettes, from 1944 to 1955, when the show was usually announced as
The Lucky Strike Program starring Jack Benny.
Writers Benny employed a small group of writers, most of whom stayed with him for many years. This was in contrast to many successful radio or television comedians, such as
Bob Hope, who changed writers frequently. One of Benny's writers,
George Balzer, noted: "One of the nice things about writing for Jack Benny was that he never denied your existence. On the contrary, he publicized itnot just in conversations, but in interviews and on the air." Historical accounts like those by longtime Benny writer
Milt Josefsberg indicate that Benny's role was essentially as head writer and director of his radio programs, though he was not credited in either capacity. In contrast to Fred Allen, who initially wrote his own radio scripts and extensively rewrote scripts produced in later years by a writing staff, Jack Benny was often described by his writers as a consummate comedy editor rather than a writer
per se.
George Burns described Benny as "the greatest editor of material in the business. He's got the knack of cutting out all the weak slush and keeping in only the strong, punchy lines." Jack Benny has a reputation as a master of timing. Since his days in radio, he often explored the limits of timing for comedic purposes, like pausing a disproportionate amount of time before answering a question. Balzer described writing material for Benny as similar to composing music, with one element being the rhythm of delivery as equivalent to musical tempo.
Theme music During his early radio shows, no recurring theme was used, with the program instead opening each week with a different then-current popular song. Throughout the Jell-O and Grape-Nuts years, announcer Don Wilson would announce the name of the show, some of the cast, then state "The orchestra opens the program with [name of song]." The orchestra number would continue softly as background for Don Wilson's opening commercial. Starting in the Lucky Strike era, Benny adopted a medley of "
Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "
Love in Bloom" as his theme music, opening every show. "Love in Bloom" was later the theme of his television show. His radio shows often ended with the orchestra playing "
Hooray for Hollywood". The TV show ended with one of two bouncy instrumentals written for the show by his musical arranger and conductor,
Mahlon Merrick. Benny sometimes joked about the propriety of "Love in Bloom" as his theme song. On a segment often played in
Tonight Show retrospectives, Benny talks with
Johnny Carson about this. Benny says he has no objections to the song in and of itself, only as
his theme. Proving his point, he begins reciting the lyrics slowly and deliberately: "Can it be the
trees. That fill the
breeze. With rare and magic perfume. Now what the hell has that got to do with
me?"
Racial attitudes Eddie Anderson was the first black man to have a recurring role in a national radio show, which was significant because at the time, black characters were not uncommonly played by white actors in
blackface. Although Eddie Anderson's Rochester may be considered a
stereotype by some, his attitudes were unusually sardonic for such a role. As was typical at the time in depicting class distinctions, Rochester always used a formal mode of address to the other (White) characters ("Mr. Benny", "Miss Livingstone") and they always used a familiar mode in speaking to him ("Rochester"), but the formal mode when speaking to him about another White character ("Mr. Benny" when speaking to Rochester but "Jack" when speaking to Jack). In many routines, Rochester gets the better of Benny, often pricking his boss' ego, or simply outwitting him. The show's portrayal of black characters could be seen as advanced for its time. In a 1956 episode, African American actor
Roy Glenn plays a friend of Rochester's, and he is portrayed as a well-educated, articulate man not as the typical "darkie stereotype" seen in many films of the time. Glenn's role was a recurring one on the series, where he was often portrayed as having to support two people on one unemployment check (i.e., himself and Rochester). Black talent was also showcased, with several guest appearances by
The Ink Spots and others. Once, when Benny and his cast and crew were doing a series of shows in New York, the entire cast, including Eddie Anderson, stayed in a prominent New York hotel. Shortly after they decamped at the hotel, a manager told Benny that some White guests from Mississippi had complained to him about Anderson staying in the hotel. He asked Benny to please "do something about it." Benny assured him that he would fix the matter. That evening, Benny moved all his people into another hotel, where Anderson would not be made to feel unwelcome.
Line flubs In the Golden Age of Radio, line flubs were common during live broadcasts, especially on a show like
The Jack Benny Program, which used sophisticated humor and complex, well-written scripts. When they happened, Jack would laugh along with the audience, ad lib a joke or two, and continue on with the show, although the line flubs clearly annoyed him. When Eddie Anderson, who had a habit of missing rehearsals, would flub his lines on the air, Jack would sometimes shout in mock indignation, "Just
one rehearsal! That's
all I ask!" As professional as he was, even Jack himself was not immune to flubs. On the November 6, 1949 episode, in a sketch where he was on a yacht cruise, Jack told the boat captain that he had been "on the Navy" during World War I, instead of "in the Navy." The episode featured so many line flubs that the following week's episode, November 13, was built around Jack calling a meeting of his cast to discuss their mistakes in the previous week's episode. Mary Livingstone had several flubs that became notorious running gags for weeks after they happened. On the October 27, 1946 episode, during a lunch counter sketch, Mary mistakenly ordered a "chiss sweeze sandwich," instead of a "Swiss cheese sandwich." On the December 3, 1950 episode, Jack told the story of how he met his valet, Rochester. According to Jack, he was driving his car, made a turn into a garage owned by
Amos 'n' Andy, and accidentally hit Rochester's car – while it was up on the grease rack. At the end of the show, Mary asked Jack, "How could you possibly hit a car when it was up on the grass reek?" Unfortunately, these line flubs may have contributed to Mary Livingstone developing a bad case of "mike fright." In the radio show's final years (1952–1955), Mary's character appeared less and less. When the show was transcribed (pre-recorded), Mary's daughter, Joan Benny, would fill in for her mother when the cast recorded the episode in front of a live studio audience, and Mary would later dub in her lines from the safety of her living room at home. On the broadcast of January 8, 1950, journalist
Drew Pearson was the subject of a joke gone wrong. Announcer Don Wilson was supposed to say he heard that Jack bought a new suit on Drew Pearson's broadcast, but accidentally said "Dreer Pooson". Later in the show, comedic actor Frank Nelson was asked by Benny if he was the doorman. Changing his original response at the suggestion of the writers, Nelson said, "Well, who do you think I am, Dreer Pooson?" The audience laughed for almost 30 seconds. (According to several sources on the show, including writer Sam Perrin, Jack collapsed in laughter on hearing Nelson's ad lib, and it was several minutes before he could continue. On the recording of the January 8, 1950 episode, Jack's laughter is not heard. However, since the show was transcribed, it may have been edited out of the final broadcast.) of
The Lucy Show. A separate sound gag involved a song Benny had written, "When You Say I Beg Your Pardon, Then I'll Come Back to You". Its inane lyrics and insipid melody guaranteed that it would never be published or recorded, but Benny continued to try to con, extort, or otherwise inveigle some of his musical guests (including
The Smothers Brothers and
Peter, Paul and Mary) to perform it. However, none ever made it all the way. In keeping with his "stingy"
schtick, on one of his television specials he remarked that, to his way of looking at things, a "special" is when the price of coffee is marked down.
The orchestra Another popular running gag concerned the social habits of Benny's on-air orchestra, who were consistently portrayed as a bunch of drunken ne'er-do-wells. Led first by
Phil Harris and later by
Bob Crosby, the orchestra, and in particular band member Frank Remley, were jokingly portrayed as often being too drunk to play properly, using an overturned bass drum to play cards on just minutes before a show and so enamored of liquor that the sight of a glass of milk would make them sick. Remley was portrayed in various unflattering situations, such as being thrown into a garbage can by a road sweeper who had found him passed out in the street at 4 am, and on a wanted poster at the Beverly Hills police station. Crosby also got consistent laughs by frequently joking about his more famous brother
Bing Crosby's vast wealth.
Christmas shopping One popular scenario that became a tradition on
The Jack Benny Program was the annual "Christmas Shopping" episode, in which Benny would go to a local department store to do his shopping. Each year, Benny would buy a ridiculously cheap Christmas gift for Don Wilson, from a harried store clerk played by Mel Blanc. Benny would then drive Blanc to insanity by exchanging the gift countless times throughout the episode. In the 1946 Christmas episode, for example, Benny buys shoelaces for Don, and is unable to make up his mind whether to give Wilson shoelaces with plastic tips or metal tips. After exchanging them repeatedly, Mel Blanc is heard screaming insanely, "Plastic tips! Metal tips! I can't stand it anymore!" A variation in 1957 was with an expensive wallet, but repeatedly changing the greeting card, prompting Blanc to shout, "I haven't run into anyone like you in 20 years! Oh, why did the governor have to give me that pardon!?" Benny then realizes that he should have gotten Don a wallet for $1.98, whereupon the store clerk responds by committing suicide. This edition was later remade for television in 1960. Over the years, in the Christmas episodes, Benny bought and repeatedly exchanged cuff links, golf tees, a box of dates, a paint set (water colors or oils), and a gopher trap. In later years, Benny would encounter Mel Blanc's wife (played by
Jean Vander Pyl or
Bea Benaderet) or the clerk's psychiatrist at the store, and drive them crazy, as well. One Christmas program had Crosby agonizing over what to get Remley: Benny: "Well, why don't you get him a cordial; like a bottle of Drambuie?" Crosby: "That's a nice thought, Jack, but Drambuie's an after-dinner drink." Benny: "So?" Crosby: "So Remley never quite makes it 'til after dinner."
The Maxwell from the seat of a
circa 1908 Maxwell Roadster Starting with the October 24, 1937, radio show, when Jack proudly announced the purchase of his car, a running joke began that Benny drove an old
Maxwell automobile, a brand that went out of business in 1925. Although some details such as the car's body style and its exact model year varied over the years, what remained constant was that Benny's old car was so worn out that it would barely run, but the miserly Benny insisted he could get a few more miles out of it. Many of the sound effects for the car's clattering engine came from an actual old motor that the sound-effects shop had salvaged from a Los Angeles junkyard. The long shots for the scene were shot months before Benny was castwith a stunt driver at the wheeland the role was intended for
Stan Laurel (which is why the character wears a derby, which Benny almost never did). When Laurel ultimately passed on appearing, Jack agreed to play the role. According to the commentary on the Criterion edition of the film, his close-ups were filmed on a rear-projection stage at the Paramount studio.
The BennyAllen feud On April 5, 1936, Benny began his famous radio feud with rival Fred Allen when he satirized Allen's show. credibly enough that Allen wisecracked about "a certain alleged violinist" who should by comparison be ashamed of himself. Benny, who listened to the Allen show, answered in kind at the end of his January 3, 1937, show, and the two comedians were off and running. For a decade, the two went at it back and forth, so convincingly that fans of either show could have been forgiven for believing they had become blood enemies. In reality, the two men were close friends and mutual admirers. Benny and Allen often appeared on each other's show during the ongoing feud; numerous surviving episodes of both comedians' radio shows feature each other, in both acknowledged guest spots and occasional cameos. On one Christmas program, Allen thanked Benny for sending him a Christmas tree, but then added that the tree had died. "Well, what do you expect," quipped Allen, "when the tree is in Brooklyn and the sap is in Hollywood." Benny in his memoir (
Sunday Nights at Seven) and Allen in his
Treadmill to Oblivion later revealed that each comedian's writing staff often met together to plot future takes on the mock feud. If Allen zapped Benny with a satirization of Benny's show ("The Pinch Penny Program"), Benny shot back with a parody of Allen's
Town Hall Tonight called "
Clown Hall Tonight", and their playful sniping ("Benny was born ignorant, and he's been losing ground ever since") was also advanced in the films
Love Thy Neighbor and ''
It's in the Bag!''. Perhaps the climax of the feud came during Fred Allen's parody of popular quiz-and-prize show
Queen for a Day. Calling the sketch "King for a Day", Allen played the host and Benny a contestant who sneaked onto the show using the alias Myron Proudfoot. Benny answered the prize-winning question correctly and Allen crowned him "king" and showered him with a passel of almost meaningless prizes. Allen proudly announced, "Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to Orange, New Jersey, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest," to which Benny joyously declared, "I'm
king for a day!" At this point a professional pressing-iron was wheeled on stage, to press Benny's suit properly. It didn't matter that Benny was still
in the suit. Allen instructed his aides to remove Benny's suit, one item at a time, ending with his trousers, each garment's removal provoking louder laughter from the studio audience. As his trousers began to come off, Benny howled, "Allen, you haven't seen the
end of me!" At once Allen shot back, "It won't be long
now!" The laughter was so loud and chaotic at the chain of events that the Allen show announcer,
Kenny Delmar, was cut off the air while trying to read a final commercial and the show's credits. (Allen was notorious for running overtime often enough, largely thanks to his ad-libbing talent, and he overran the clock again this time.) Benny was profoundly shaken when in 1956 Allen suddenly died at age 61 from a heart attack. In a statement released on the day after Allen's death, Benny said, "People have often asked me if Fred Allen and I were really friends in real life. My answer is always the same: You couldn't have such a long-running and successful feud as we did, without having a deep and sincere friendship at the heart of it." Allen himself wrote, "For years people have been asking me if Jack and I are friendly. I don't think that Jack Benny has an enemy in the world. ... He is my favorite comedian and I hope to be his friend until he is forty. That will be forever."
Preservation The radio series was one of the most extensively preserved programs of its era, with the archive almost complete from 1936 onward and several episodes existing from before that (including the 1932 premiere). A few episodes from the series' later years remain missing, however, such as the shows from September 30 and October 7, 1951. The March 28, 1948 episode of the radio series was chosen by the
Library of Congress as a 2004 selection for preservation in the
National Recording Registry. ==Television==